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NPR's Nina Totenberg reports that the Supreme Court ruled today that the three-year deadline for getting tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service cannot be waived because the person who made the tax overpayment was mentally incompetent. The case involved taxpayers from Arizona and Hawaii, including one woman who found after her father's death that he had overpaid $7,000 while he was suffering from senility.

NPR's Steve Inskeep reports that the United Auto Workers union and one major auto parts supplier, American Axle & Manufacturing, reached a tentative agreement today that averted a strike. A walkout at a second supplier continues. It's all part of a major union effort to keep, and expand, its presence among the parts suppliers who do more and more "outsourced" work for auto makers.

Daniel speaks with sports reporter George Ofman about the changing face of college basketball. Freshman and sophmore college students and even some high schoolers are opting to go straight to the NBA. Many are leaving for the money and also to avoid a career threatening injury. There has also been a large influx of foreign players in the past few years. Women's basketball has also changed over the years being more popular today than it's ever been.

A strike by 1,800 workers at Chrysler Corp. that began last Thursday is costing the auto maker $10 million a day, forcing it to halt production at four assembly plants that produce Dodge pickups and vans and Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicles. And in Oklahoma City, a strike at a General Motors Corporation assembly plant that produces the Chevrolet Malibu and Oldsmobile Cutlass entered its 11th day. From Detroit, NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports from Kinshasa that a general strike called by the opposition shut down the Zairean capital today. Opponents of embattled President Mobutu Sese Seko are trying to step up the pressure on him to resign. Rebel forces now control more than one-third of the vast central African nation, and claim to be five hundred miles from Kinshasa. They say they will advance on the capital if Mobutu refuses to step down.

NPR'S Julie McCarthy reports that the Japanese are gearing up to go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament, but no surprises are expected. The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto is expected to win, despite its involvement in recent scandals and charges of corruption. The LDP ruled Japan from 1955 to 1993, and after a short period out of power, it returned as the dominant force in a coalition government that ran the country since mid-1994.

NPR's Andy Bowers reports on the image make-over of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Legitimately given more power while President Boris Yeltsin gets ready for heart surgery, Chernomyrdin is working to create the image of a man who can be trusted- in contrast to his rivals for power. This week he gave a rare television interview intended to counter his image as a grey bureaucrat. It's the latest twist in the Kremlin struggle for power.

Meet everybody's favorite unknown Seattle band. Pearl Jam chose the Fastbacks as the opening act for its current world tour. The Fastbacks have been laboring for nearly twenty years on the Seattle club scene. They've watched as their friends became famous (during the major label feeding frenzy that descended on Seattle during the grunge boom) and they didn't. But they've persevered. Marcie Sillman, of member station K-U-O-W, reports.

Theodore Kaczynski, the man accused of being the Unabomber, kept a diary in his Montana cabin that detailed 16 bombings attributed to the terrorist, according to assistant U.S. attorney Robert Cleary. Cleary discussed the journals during a pretrial hearing in court in Sacramento today. Linda talks with NPR's Howard Berkes and reporter Bill Rickman of member station KXJZ in Sacramento about what this means for the case.

Commentator David Brooks has some thoughts about Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole's media bashing -- he thinks there is validity to Mr. Dole's claims that the media is liberal. A recent poll from the Roper Center found that 89% of national reporters voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. However, Brooks doesn't think that a liberal press corps kills a Republican campaign...obsessing about it does.